| Without wishing to take anything away from Lewis Hamilton’s utterly brilliant driving on Sunday in Brazil, seldom have I ever seen a Formula 1 car have such a big top-speed advantage over the rest of the field. Given what happened at Interlagos, what’s to stop Mercedes taking a new ICE at every race from here until the end of the season? Hamilton showed that he can overcome a five-place grid penalty in a matter of laps – especially on a track with a decent DRS zone. Now we move on to Qatar, a track where I’ve seen GP2 cars in action first-hand. Think of it as a flat Mugello (where Hamilton won in 2020) but in the middle of the desert, where you can only realistically overtake at the first corner – with inside and outside lines possible to make stick. Red Bull will have to pin its hopes on being so rapid through its sweeping high-speed bends that it will be out of reach on the kilometer-long start/finish straight. And if Hamilton gets DRS on Max Verstappen, good luck with defending that… By: Charles Bradley, Global Editor in Chief
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